Seagate 1TB and 1.5 TB models failing at alarming rate
Recently this past year Seagate was one of the first companies to release a 1.5 TB drive. However, having this claim to fame doesn’t have much flack when you have an alarming number of the models failing. From personal experience, my dilemma started in January when for a birthday present i was surprised with a 1.5 TB drive to upgrade my 500GB drive (also a Seagate).
Less than a month in the drive began to make a clicking noise and locking up for 30 seconds or more. I promptly went to Seagate, got an RMA request and got a replacement drive. Everything seemed ok until April rolled around and my 1 TB Drive started exhibiting the exact same problem minus the clicking. Now familiar with the RMA process i returned the drive, this time to my surprise it was a “Certified Repaired” drive…(this is what i pay good money for..a failed drive that has been ‘fixed?!). The 1TB drive now has Windows 7 RTM on it and is running great to my surprise. One Week after getting this drive back, I’m back where i started, the 1.5TB drive with CC1H firmware (checking the Seagate site it claims its not affected..i beg to differ) This time transfer rates are on par with the speed of a 56k modem..
Needless to say i am ASHAMED of Seagate. A company that has had my heart and loyalty for over 10 years all thrown away with this deplorable excuse of a product. Frankly i am surprised there isn’t a class action law suit yet. Needless to say i am really pondering weather or not to send the 1.5 drive back..The money i have wasted on RMA-ing these drives could have bought me a Western Digital drive or a Samsung drive which i hear are doing quite well. To those of you considering buying Seagate drives in the near future, stay away from the 1TB and 1.5TB models…at least until they get them fixed.
Shameful Seagate, absolutely shameful..I’d be replacing each of these failing drives with the 7200.12’s or the ES2’s…yet you don’t. You have lost my business.
Update: User’s experiencing problems with this drive model as i have, please go here to take part in a Class Action Lawsuit against Seagate and their faulty 7200.11 drives. http://www.kbklawfirm.com/seagate/index.php
Seagate should have recalled these drives and ended the firmware a long time ago. Instead the made more, creating more problems. It would have been much easier to do it then.
Or better yet, thoroughly test the size drives in question before releasing it to the mass and giving yourself a maelstrom of complaints!
I blame Maxtor for Seagate’s problems.
Seriously, how do we sue these jerks?
Kevin, in any class action lawsuit you have to get others to collectively go in and sue for selling faulty hardware and shipping our ‘repaired’ failed drives. I’m sure it would win in court considering seagate knows the issues exist but refuse to rectify the problem by sending those affected the new non affected 7200.12 drives.
@Kevin Kelly
What you mean this? http://www.kbklawfirm.com/seagate/index.php
We had three 7200.12′s @ work and all failed within two months
William nice find… this is definitely it something that needs to be discussed. I will add this to the frontpage.
What about Quantum? I know we can blame them somehow.
Seriously though, I was working with a Seagate 1TB drive with “good” firmware preinstalled, and after transporting it by car, reasonably gently, it never spun up again. The owner of the drive has not yet been able to RMA it to Seagate. Not that it matters anyway, the drive causes the Silicon Image RAID BIOS for the ATI SB450 on a Sapphire motherboard to hang at boot up. Hot-plugging the drive after XP boots allows the drive to mount and work fine though.
Small claims may be a better choice. Class action suits rarely have a significant benefit to class members. In any case, here’s the response I got:
We have concluded our investigation into this matter. We are not moving forward with this law suit.
Thank you,
Kris Lara
Case Development
KABATECK| BROWN| KELLNER| LLP
644 S. Figueroa St.| Los Angeles| CA| 90017
i have the exact same problem you describe, a 7200.11 1.5tb drive used on Ubuntu Linux. Purchased in April 2009, the first drive was installed for only 60 days and then started clicking a lot. then pausing during media playback, then failing. They said it was not a firmware issue as i was already at the latest version. Replacement drive installed on July 7th (they gave me a refurbished unit). The new drive worked for about 25 days with no issues and then started the same clicking problems and also boot failure. Ran the Seatools for dos and it found no problems but the test stalled and restarted 5 times before it said “all is well” The second replacement drive is on the way now but from what i read here i don’t expect much.
it is amusing to note that the newer 7200.12 drives do not have a 1.5 TB version yet. so, assuming i end up throwing out this drive and getting another brand, what’s good in the 1.5tb range?
I own nine seagate hd’s and all are Baracuda 7200.11 a few other laptop seagate drives. I have had to return two in the last couple months and one of the “certified repaired” drives they sent me just failed. It costs me about $12 in shipping costs alone besides the time lost discovering the issue to it’s final resolution. I have become very concerned about this issue and like others plan on switching to another brand at the best opportunity. I have been using seagate drives for ever a decade now and in the past couple years I have replaced more drives than the last eight combined. I try to keep up with backing up my data but can imagine the nightmare these issues are causing for lay computer users who cannot diagnose these issues let alone backup or reinstall a hard drive. I am not a fan of class action lawsuits since you lawyers get rich while the users get pennies on the dollar. What would help is a lawsuit that forced seagate to replace failed hard drives at their own expense paying for shipping to and from the end user as well as forcing them to send the end user a brand new hard drive with a brand new warranty as recompense for their miserable failure.